The Abusive Relationship You Never Want to Leave
Pros
Amazon is a company that seemingly offers a lot of opportunity, and for the right person, it can be endless. This is why people never want to leave; especially if they have FOMO (fear of missing out from an employer that seems to be taking over the world). People tend to promote quickly; which is a sign not to get too comfortable. It seems to be fairly easy to get a transfer if a person wants to relocate. Going to another team or making a career change at Amazon seems to be easier than at other companies.
Cons
The pay is drastically low compared to other HR peers inside and outside the industry. It’s terrible knowing that we work TWICE as hard as most employees in the global workforce but make a fraction of what they make. For the most part, this is true for other roles such as L4 and L5 Area Managers, Loss Prevention Specialists, and other entry/mid-level roles. If you are under poor leadership which is unfortunately likely despite Amazon’s claim to “Hire and Develop the Best”, then it makes your work and life nearly unbearable. You feel stuck and probably won’t be promoted as equitably as your peers even if you are a Top Tier or Highly Valued employee. It feels like a grave punishment to your career when you are trying to shine under terrible leaders or a boss that overcompensates. For Amazon to be one of the most diverse companies I have ever seen, they deal with the most discrimination and prejudice that I have never seen in my life. This goes for any protected class such as the LGBTQ+ community, disabled persons, people who practice a religion other than Christianity, etc. It is rampant within their fulfillment and logistics areas but Corporate seems to have a different experience. Joining Amazon’s largest population, their “warehousing” industry will be NOTHING like what you see in Seattle or any of their regional headquarters. You have a 90% chance of never meeting your most senior leaders that report to our Lord and savior, Jeff Bezos. Do not expect to meet him either. Amazon is way too massive for you to make connections outside of 3 levels above you. Changes are happening daily. Literally. This is not a joke. We all get daily or weekly emails about what is changing and sometimes it can be an entire process to where you’re unlearning something you just learned. Amazon will never stick with anything for an ample period of time. Your accomplishments fade just as fast because of this. Amazon has an emotionally abusive culture that screams “you are worthless and your accomplishments are a day old so get over it”. You can literally give your heart and soul to Amazon and it will never be good enough. Your stakeholders will let you know that. The Associates you encounter on a day to day are extremely needy and refuse to use the resources given to them many times to answer their questions. You find yourself in a never ending time loop repeating information. The job can also be highly tactical; even as a HR Business Partner, such as tending to menial timecard questions or physically signing someone up for text message notifications with their phone because they don’t know how. It is also very common to deal with irate, irrational, and downright disrespectful Associates but Amazon’s culture is for HR to endlessly take the abuse in the name of customer obsession. It mentally starts to drive you crazy because there is at least one Associate every day that tries to push you over the edge. HR doesn’t get paid enough at Amazon for this and HR for HR is a complete joke when you need resources (like reporting a boss who is unethical). HR employees at Amazon deserve better and should have mental health days to escape the anguish the role causes us. Fix the biases in promoting people. I don’t know how Amazon hasn’t faced several lawsuits because of this. Leaders will go through what’s called Operations Leadership Review and choose people based on likability and other unlawful things and skip over people who need extra coaching or are more talented.
